Anya

Anya Savikin lived among well-to-do Russian Jews in Poland, in a world more like Tolstoy's than our own, until the first bombing of Warsaw and the chaos that ensued. Her story incarnates the strength and love of Eastern European Jewry, before and after their decimation.

The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir

In September, 1939, George Lucius Salton's boyhood in Tyczyn, Poland, was shattered by escalating violence and terror under German occupation. His father, a lawyer, was forbidden to work, but 11-year-old George dug potatoes, split wood, and resourcefully helped his family. They suffered hunger and deprivation, a forced march to the Rzeszow ghetto, then eternal separation when 14-year-old George and his brother were left behind to labor in work camps while their parents were deported in boxcars to die in Belzec. For the next three years, George slaved and barely survived in 10 concentration camps.

Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations

>i>Mosaic is compelling storytelling at its best - from the fascinating details of Polish-Jewish culture and the rivalries and dramas of family life, to its moving account of lives torn apart by war and persecution, this an extraordinary true story of a family, and of one woman's journey to reclaim her heritage.

Rena's Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz

"I do not hate. To hate is to let Hitler win." - Rena Kornreich Gelissen. On March 26, 1942, the first mass transport of Jews - 999 young women - arrived in Auschwitz. Among them was Rena Kornreich, the 716th woman numbered in camp. A few days later, her sister Danka arrives and so begins a trial of love and courage that will last three years and 41 days, from the beginning Auschwitz death camp to the end of the war.

I Shall Live: Surviving the Holocaust Against All Odds

I Shall Live tells the gripping true story of a Jewish family in Germany and Russia as the Nazi party gained power in Germany. When Henry Orenstein and his siblings ended up in a series of concentrations camps, Orenstein's bravery and quick thinking help him to save himself and his brothers from execution by playing a role in the greatest hoax ever pulled on the upper echelons of Nazi command. Orenstein's lucid prose recreates this horrific time in history and his constant struggle for survival as the Nazis move him and his brothers through five concentration camps.

Roman's Journey: An Extraordinary Odyssey of Holocaust Survival

Roman Halter was a spirited, optimistic schoolboy in 1939 when he and his family gathered behind the curtains to watch the Volksdeutsche (German Polish) neighbors of their small town in western Poland greet the arrival of Hitler's armies with kisses and swastika flags. Within days, the family home had been seized, 12-year-old Roman had become a slave of the local SS chief, and, returning from an errand, he silently witnessed his Jewish classmates being bayoneted to death by soldiers at the edge of town. So began his remarkable six-year journey through some of the darkest caverns of Nazi Europe....

The Hands of War: A Tale of Endurance and Hope, From a Survivor of the Holocaust

An inspiring account from one of history’s darkest moments. Marione Ingram grew up in Hamburg, Germany, in the late 1930s and early 1940s. She was German. She was Jewish. She was a survivor. This is her story. As a young girl, Marione was aware that people of the Jewish faith were regarded as outsiders, the supposed root of Germany’s many problems. She grew up in an apartment building where neighbors were more than happy to report Jews to the Gestapo.

In 1941, newlyweds William and Rosalie Schiff are forcibly separated and sent on their individual odysseys through a surreal maze of hate. Terror in the Krakow ghetto, sadistic SS death games, cruel human medical experiments, eyewitness accounts of brutal murders of men, women, children, and even infants, and the menace of rape in occupied Poland make William & Rosalie an unusually explicit view of the chaos that World War II unleashed on the Jewish people.

I Kiss Your Hands Many Times: Hearts, Souls, and Wars in Hungary

Marianne Szegedy-Maszák’s parents, Hanna and Aladár, met and fell in love in Budapest in 1940. He was a rising star in the foreign ministry - a vocal anti-Fascist who was in talks with the Allies when he was arrested and sent to Dachau. She was the granddaughter of Manfred Weiss, the industrialist patriarch of an aristocratic Jewish family that owned factories. Though many in the family had converted to Catholicism decades earlier, when the Germans invaded Hungary in March 1944, they were forced into hiding.

Long Journey Home: A Young Girl's Memoir of Surviving the Holocaust

The summer of 1939 turned out to be the last summer of author Lucy Lipiner's childhood. On September 1, when she was six years old, her parents roused Lucy and her older sister from their beds, and with other relatives in tow fled their town of Sucha and the invasion by Nazi Germany.

Remember Us: My Journey from the Shtetl Through the Holocaust

Remember Us is a look back at the lost world of the shtetl: a wise Zayde offering prophetic and profound words to his grandson, the rich experience of Shabbos, and the treasure of a loving family. All this is torn apart with the arrival of the Holocaust, beginning a crucible fraught with twists and turns so unpredictable and surprising that they defy any attempt to find reason within them. Through the eyes of 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Martin Small, we learn that these priceless memories that are too painful to remember are also too painful to forget.

Country of Ash: A Jewish Doctor in Poland, 1939-1945

Country of Ash is the starkly compelling, original chronicle of a Jewish doctor who miraculously survived near-certain death, first inside the Lodz and Warsaw ghettoes, where he was forced to treat the Gestapo, then on the Aryan side of Warsaw, where he hid under numerous disguises. He clandestinely recorded the terrible events he witnessed, but his manuscript disappeared during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After the war, reunited with his wife and young daughter, he rewrote his story.

My Brother's Voice: How a Young Hungarian Boy Survived the Holocaust: A True Story

Stephen 'Pista' Nasser was 13 years old when the Nazis whisked him and his family away from their home in Hungary to Auschwitz. His memories of that terrifying experience are still vivid, and his love for his brother Andris still brings a husky tone to his voice when he remembers the terrible ordeal they endured together. Stephen's account of the Holocaust, told in the refreshingly direct and optimistic language of a young boy, will help every listener to understand that the Holocaust was real.

The Shadow of Death: The Holocaust in Lithuania

Holocaust survivor Harry Gordon recalls in brutal detail the anguished years of his youth, a youth spent struggling to survive in a Lithuanian concentration camp. A memoir about hope and resilience, The Shadow of Death describes the invasion of Kovno by the Red Army and the impact of Soviet occupation from the perspective of the ghetto's weakest and poorest class. It also serves as a reminder that the Germans were not alone responsible for the persecution and extermination of Jews.

Out of the Depths: The Story of a Child of Buchenwald Who Returned Home at Last

Israel Meir Lau, one of the youngest survivors of Buchenwald, was just eight years old when the camp was liberated in 1945. Descended from a 1,000-year unbroken chain of rabbis, he grew up to become Chief Rabbi of Israel--and like many of the great rabbis, Lau is a master storyteller. Out of the Depths is his harrowing, miraculous, and inspiring account of life in one of the Nazis' deadliest concentration camps, and how he managed to survive against all possible odds.

Isaac's Army: A Story of Courage and Survival in Nazi-Occupied Poland

Starting as early as 1939, disparate Jewish underground movements coalesced around the shared goal of liberating Poland from Nazi occupation. For the next six years, separately and in concert, they waged a heroic war of resistance against Hitler's war machine that culminated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In Isaac's Army, Matthew Brzezinski delivers the first-ever comprehensive narrative account of that struggle, following a group of dedicated young Jews - some barely out of their teens - whose individual acts of defiance helped rewrite the ending of World War II.

Pastel Orphans

In 1930s Berlin, young Henrik, the son of a Jewish father and Aryan mother, watches the world around him crumbling: people are rioting in the streets, a strange yellow star begins appearing in shop windows, and friends are forced to move - or they simply disappear.

I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust

Imagine being a 13-year-old girl in love with boys, school, family - life itself. Then suddenly, in a matter of hours, your life is shattered by the arrival of a foreign army. This is the memoir of Elli Friedmann, who was 13 years old in March 1944, when the Nazis invaded Hungary. It describes her descent into the hell of Auschwitz, a concentration camp where, because of her golden braids, she was selected for work instead of extermination. In intimate, excruciating details she recounts what it was like.

The Seamstress

Told with the same old-fashioned narrative power as the novels of Herman Wouk, The Seamstress is the true story of Seren (Sara) Tuvel Bernstein and her survival during wartime. This powerful eyewitness account of survival, told with power and grace, will stay with listeners for years to come.

Let Me Go

Helga Schneider was four when her mother suddenly abandoned her family in Berlin in 1941. When she next saw her mother, 30 years later, she learned the shocking reason why. Her mother had joined the Nazi SS and had become a guard in the concentration camps, including Auschwitz, where she was in charge of a "correction" unit and responsible for untold acts of torture.

They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust

This audio tells the stories of Polish Holocaust survivors and their rescuers. The authors traveled extensively in the United States and Poland to interview some of the few remaining participants before their generation is gone. Tammeus and Cukierkorn unfold many stories that have never before been made public: gripping narratives of Jews who survived against all odds and courageous non-Jews who risked their own lives to provide shelter.

Two Rings: A Story of Love and War

Trapped in Poland in 1941, like many Jews, Millie Werber went from the Radom Ghetto to slave labor in an armaments factory, survived Auschwitz, and toiled in a second factory until liberation came on April 1, 1945. She faced death many times but lived to marry a good man and fellow survivor. Meanwhile, she concealed a photograph in her closet and carried a secret in her heart.

Escape from Sobibor

On October 14, 1943, 600 Jews imprisoned in Sobibor, a secret Nazi death camp in eastern Poland, revolted. They killed a dozen SS officers and guards, trampled the barbed wire fences, and raced across an open field filled with anti-tank mines. Against all odds, more than three hundred made it safely into the woods. Fifty of those men and women managed to survive the rest of the war. In this edition of Escape from Sobibor, fully updated in 2012, Richard Rashke tells their stories

All But My Life

A classic of Holocaust literature, Gerda Weissmann Klein's celebrated memoir tells the moving story of a young woman's 3 frightful years as a slave laborer of the Nazis and her miraculous liberation. All But My Life stands as the ultimate lesson in humanity, hope, and friendship.

Publisher's Summary

Anya Savikin lived among well-to-do Russian Jews in Poland, in a world more like Tolstoy's than our own, until the first bombing of Warsaw and the chaos that ensued. Her story incarnates the strength and love of Eastern European Jewry, before and after their decimation.

I stumbled on this book via a genre list on Goodreads. . . and was happy to find it available on Audible.

This is not just "another" story of the Jewish experience during Hitler's reign; it is a GREAT true story of one woman's experience that has been written as novel.

Anya Brodman died in 1996. This novel relieves her years-long nightmare as a young Russian Jew who moved to Poland with her family prior to the outbreak of WWII. Her wonderful family was slowly but surely decimated; their upper middle-class station ripped from under them as her father, brothers and husband were slaughtered. Anya, her daughter and mother suffered in a Jewish Ghetto and just before Anya and her mother were forced to board the train to the labor camps, where Anya and her mother were parted, Anya made the wrenching decision to give her young 3-year old daughter to a Gentile, in hopes that the child's life would be spared.

This is a wrenching story. Part I is a narrative of Anya's family and life before the war. It was idyllic. From there the story follows her decisions, deceptions and horrendous life; sometimes in gory detail; as she prevails. Anya's story reveals her fallibility, her wounds and pain, some of from which she was never able to recover.

I was immediately engaged with this story because of the superb narration. Kathe Mazur did a marvelous job throughout. It is a long story, but one that is brilliantly written and told. Anya's story is one of a heroic struggle just to survive and reveals her character and determination.

There is little to criticize, however I would offer this note: There were elements of the story that provided so much detail that I wished for less; and there were elements of the story presented with little detail and I wished for more. This minor fault does not diminish its value nor my recommendation to consider putting this one in your library.

What does Kathe Mazur bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Her accents and cadence are perfect! The only real quibble I had was her pronunciation of "Gymnasium", which should be "Gim-Nah-zee-um". Minor quibble aside, she was an incredible choice to read this book

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

There were many. Scenes from the ghetto, the camps, the dispossession and dislocation... in some ways it moved so quickly that I almost had to skip back to see what I had missed.

Any additional comments?

Like a good strong cup of coffee, this novel is full-bodied, mostly bitter, but with tinges of sugar. The last 1/4 of the book is a bit more hopeful than the first 3/4, just with the levity of the children alone...All in all, I loved this book, and will check out other of Mrs. Schaeffer's books.

The narrator did an amazing job of portraying many different characters just through her voice! Much richer narration than any other Audible book I've listened to so far. Although parts of the story are horrible (of course) I loved hearing Anya's story in her own words. She seemed so real to me that I Googled "Anya" to find out if this was based on a real person. While some reviewers have said that there were too many details, I loved all the details! I felt like I was right there in her home with her.

What does Kathe Mazur bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I really enjoyed hearing the names of people, places and things. When I read a story I try to say the names in that language in my head, and usually fail. When I listened to "Anya" I didn't have to do that work, and so I was more able to immerse myself in the story. I loved Mazur's narration - she did a wonderful job of bringing all the characters to life, like Nanushka's toddler voice and Farah, as well as Anya.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I just could not get into this book. The main character is very unpleasant - whining and self centered throughout. The performer was very shrill and whining which only added to the unpleasant tone of the main character. The story dragged and bogged down in detail. I disliked the way the main character managed to survive many parts of the holocaust in unrealistic and ridiculous ways. I gave up about 3/4 of the way through. This just wasn't for me.

Excellent epic novel about a holocaust survivor. It is unique because it is written as a stream of consciousness and it is one of the most detailed books I've ever read, and the reader REALLY gets to know Anya. This novel is extremely well researched and is just plain impressive.along with the narration -- equally impressive. My first introduction to Susan Fromberg Schaeffer novels.

Would you consider the audio edition of Anya to be better than the print version?

I did not read the print version of this story.

What other book might you compare Anya to and why?

I have just finished another book called the Storyteller which was similar in that it talked about Nazi Germany and the atrocities involving the Jews. Neither was based on a true story but both books were very believable.

Which character – as performed by Kathe Mazur – was your favorite?

My favorite character was Ninka, the little Jewish girl, in the story.

I have attempted to find this book for a long time and enjoyed hearing it on Audible. Some of the events and characters in the story seemed a little implausible but overall, it was a good listen. SPOILER ALERT!!!!! Some reviewers felt disappointed by the ending because it was not very upbeat, but I have learned enough about trauma to know that this was a very plausible ending and I respect the author for it.But major kudos go to the narrator!! She read this story with enough judicious detachment to allow the listeners to interpret the characters for themselves instead of hammering home repeatedly how the character is supposed to be perceived. I wish other narrators would allow for this, as the listener gets a much more in-depth experience.

I might have enjoyed reading this book, but can't tell if it was the book or the reader. The female characters were voiced as young, tentative, even whiny. I did finish listening to it, but almost stopped several times.

This book is not what I expected. I listened to it in order to use up my credit and educate myself. The first part drags on and on. too much information describing homes and IMO senseless description of personalities that are irelevant

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